Video Shows ‘Voter Error,’ Not ‘Election Interference’ in Kentucky

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Quick Take

A video showing a Laurel County, Kentucky, voter having difficulty marking a ballot for former President Donald Trump was investigated and found to be an “isolated incident” of “voter error,” a spokesperson for the secretary of state said. Social media posts baselessly claimed it was an example of “election interference.”

Full Story

Throughout his 2024 election bid, former President Donald Trump has baselessly questioned the integrity of U.S. elections. There is no evidence that Trump’s defeat in 2020 was due to fraud or cheating, as we have written. State and federal judges have rejected Trump’s claims, often saying that his legal team provided no evidence of fraud. Election security officials at the time called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

But bogus claims of 2024 election interference persisted as voters across the country began to cast their ballots.

In a series of posts on Instagram, users falsely characterize a viral video as evidence of pervasive fraud. The video depicts a voter in Laurel County, Kentucky, repeatedly attempting to select the Republican presidential ticket, Trump and Sen. JD Vance, but the ballot marking device instead indicates a vote for the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz.

One post misleadingly reported, “BREAKING: Voter machines in Kentucky are automatically selecting ‘Harris-Walz’ despite voter’s NUMEROUS attempts to select ‘Trump-Vance.’”

“Share this and tag every representative you can think of. This is election interference at its finest and that’s a CRIME,” another post claimed. 

A third post baselessly described the video as an example of more extensive interference nationwide: “People in the comments all over the country are saying the same thing happened to them. How many people did not notice and moved on to their next selection?”

Local and state officials mounted a rapid response to the Oct. 31 incident, which the Laurel County voter reported to election officials at her polling location.​​

Michon Lindstrom, a spokesperson for Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, told us in an email that this was an “isolated incident” of “voter error,” not evidence of election interference. Adams is a Republican who won reelection last year.

“The ballot marking device was removed and the Attorney General’s office is looking at the machine out of an abundance of caution,” Lindstrom said.

The Laurel County voter responsible for the video ultimately deposited a ballot containing her desired selections, the State Board of Elections said in a Nov. 1 statement.

More than 1,700 people in Laurel County participated in in-person absentee voting on Oct. 31, and “neither the State Board of Elections nor the Laurel County Clerk were made aware of any other reports of issues with the county’s [ballot marking devices and scanners] on that day,” the board said in its statement.

“According to statements made by the voter to the County Clerk, the voter was able to ultimately use the touchscreen correctly to highlight the field for Donald Trump and every other one of her preferred candidates,” the board also said.

Device Allows for Reviewing Selections

The device featured in the video was an Election Systems & Software (ES&S) ExpressVote ballot marking device, or BMD. The device does not electronically tabulate votes. Instead, voters must make selections for each race on the BMD screen, print their completed ballots, then insert their ballots into an ES&S DS-200 scanner to formally record their selections.

Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown explained in an Oct. 31 Facebook post, “You insert your blank ballot into [the BMD]. … It shows you who you have chosen for each race and notifies you if you didn’t make a selection in a race before it allows the voter to continue to the next page. When you come to the end of the ballot it shows you how you voted in every race and issue. It confirms with each voter that they are satisfied with their selections twice before printing the ballot.” 

“Once you receive your ballot back from the ballot marking device you can review your choices again before placing it into the scanner,” Brown continued. “If you made a mistake, you may spoil that ballot and receive another one[.] Kentucky Law allows two spoiled ballots only. Once you are satisfied with your ballot you may place it into the scanner, and it verifies that it has been counted.”

Upon receiving news of the Oct. 31 incident, the BMD was “set face down” in the vote center until a representative of the Kentucky attorney general’s office arrived, Brown reported on Facebook.

“After several minutes of attempting to recreate the scenario [in the video], it did occur,” Brown wrote. “This was accomplished by hitting some area in between the boxes. After that we tried for several minutes to do it again and could not.” Investigators used the same BMD from the video when attempting to recreate the scenario. 

Brown posted an additional video to Facebook on Nov. 1 with tips to successfully navigate Laurel County BMDs. The State Board of Elections recommends that voters use a finger or stylus to make selections “within the middle of the field allocated for that candidate or response.” 

Voters in Kentucky can report ballot issues to the election officials at their polling location and then call the attorney general’s election hotline, 1-800-328-VOTE.

Lindstrom, the secretary of state spokesperson, said Kentucky conducts post-election audits, which involve hand recounts of ballots.

“All Kentucky voters can have confidence that our elections are secure and any potential issues will be addressed quickly,” Attorney General Russell Coleman, a Republican, said on X. 

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

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